CM is very obviously built as a roleplay environment with combat as a feature, not the other way around like TGMC is. It's a goddamn shame that the devs seem to be turning it into a TDM, or that they seem to think marines need to be at an overall (as opposed to strictly an early-game or late-game) disadvantage against xenos in order to keep the game from devolving into a deathmatch. The problem is, as it was for TGMC in the days of Crash only, that the only major objectives of either side is to kill the other as soon as it becomes feasible. This is and has been such a pervasive problem over the time I've played CM that a fair number of the COs that made the game fun and memorable for a lot of people (Bill Carson, Wamakahana, and the likes) have basically quit because the staff cracked down on RP that doesn't strictly fit into the TDM mold that the devs lately are trying to cram the game into.
It's unbelievably tone-deaf for staff or devs to try and force people, especially COs, to take the game as serious as a heart attack just because one side cares more about the dopamine hit of winning the game than having a bit of fun and playing just a little loose with the suspension of disbelief in the setting they are playing in. There used to be a lot more roleplay in the hive back before the techweb was introduced, but now its just deathmatch chatter with just enough xeno slang to avoid a bwoink.
Xenos in particular have no objectives on the ground other than to win the game, and by the time the Marines touch the ground, there are basically no hosts other than them so there's basically nothing to do. I think this is a missed opportunity. Marines used to have intel and research notes hidden around the map to recover, but that was cut from the game. Given the xenomorphs' reliance on hosts to reproduce and their otherwise primal urges to survive and grow their numbers, one would think that driving away or completely killing off hosts that could sustain their growth would be counterintuitive, and going and hunting down hosts on other planets when the hosts are already coming to the one the hive is on is a waste of time, energy, and biomass.
If this server is going to survive without losing the identity and playerbase that gave it the popularity to remain king of the hub, the powers that be need to stop cheapening the experience, return to the RP-centered roots, and stop catering to and/or adding their own voices to the screeching of people ON BOTH SIDES who only seem to have fun when the only thing they have to think about is clicking people until they go horizontal and avoiding being clicked on until horizontal themselves.